Pittsburgh has George Romero, Baltimore has John Waters, and Boulder has the memory of Stan Brakhage.

Portland has Gus Van Sant, Bill Plympton, Matt Groening, Mike Richardson, Jon Raymond, Aaron Katz, Chel White, Jacob & Arnold Pander, James Westby, Jim Blashfield, Joan Gratz, Joanna Priestley, Matt McCormick, Rose Bond, Vanessa Renwick and Will Vinton.

Ever wonder why?

For cities wishing to replicate Portland’s densely populated cinematic scene, here’s a handy “how to” guide.

1.  Start early.

As soon as people were making films in New York and Fort Lee, they were making them in Portland. Portland’s first film studio, American Lifeograph, opened in 1910. That’s the same year movies came to Hollywood.

2. Have a show business friendly mayor.

During the 16 year tenure of theater-owner-turned-mayor George Baker, downtown Portland was wall to wall theaters. John Gilbert, Clark Gable, William Powell, Edward Everett Horton and Eugene Pallette are some of the actors who jumpstarted their acting careers on the Portland stage, some of them in Baker’s own stock company. It was Baker who renamed Seventh Avenue “Broadway”.

3. Support innovation.

Oregon’s oldest source of print media, The Oregonian, responded to the puzzling new medium of radio by setting up a station right in the Oregonian Tower. Radio later served as an Early Warning System to identify the talent of Portlanders Mel Blanc, Suzanne Burce (renamed Jane Powell by MGM) and Johnnie Ray.

4. Grow your own film processing lab.

After WWII, Portland inventor Frank Hood went to work for a brand new electronics firm named Tektronix. He set up his own home lab to process films he made for them, after losing patience with the delays of sending film to LA. Eventually, he went into business as Teknifilm Lab. For decades, independent filmmaking in Portland was supported by Hood’s lax attitude toward payment schedules.

5. Provide a home for an exiled Hollywood film scholar.

Andries Deinum came to Portland during the blacklist. His vision of film as a mode of social discourse laid the groundwork for PSU’s Center For The Moving Image, housed in Lincoln Hall. Jim Blashfield, Bill Plympton, and Matt Groening were among the faithful attendees of the Center’s influential screening series, run by the Portland State Film Committee.

6. Provide a day job for the guy who wants to mentor the guy who wants to revive the archaic art form of stop motion animation.

Homer Groening led a dual life – ad man by day and experimental filmmaker by night. He had a family, a home, and his own business doing what he loved – and he did it all without leaving Portland. Aspiring filmmaker Will Vinton paid attention, and followed suit. His career, like Groening’s, would encompass both television commercials and art house films, but on a much larger scale.

7. Work with, not against, a pair of cinema addled students who want to start a regional film center.

When the National Endowment for the Arts decided to seed regional filmmaking, they went looking for the right person to submit a grant for a film center in Portland. They were pointed to Brooke Jacobson and Bob Summers, members of the Portland State Film Committee. Brooke and Bob wrote the grant, Portland Art Museum acted as fiscal sponsor, and the Northwest Film Center went into business. This year marks its 40th anniversary.

8. Work with, not against, a visionary film preservationist who wants to create a moving image archive.

Lew Cook was trained as a newsreel photographer by the first generation of Portland filmmakers. His stop motion film, The Little Baker, made circa 1925, proved prophetic when it came to Portland’s future claim to cinema history. He and Thomas Vaughn conceived Oregon Historical Society’s moving image archive, and Cook personally trained the preservationist, Michele Kribs, who currently presides over it.

To re-cap: by the end of the 1970’s, Portland had a film program at Portland State University, a film archive at Oregon Historical Society, and a regional film festival (now the NWFF) located at Portland Art Museum. That nucleus of film creativity on the park blocks was balanced by a film processing lab, an emerging animation studio, and a warehouse waiting to be filled with  filmmakers’ offices over in northwest Portland. No one entity owned the scene – the infrastructure and the support system served all comers.

The following timeline concentrates on factors which contributed to a culture where independent filmmakers supported each other in Portland. It does not address the important role played by Hollywood productions shooting in Oregon. The symbiotic role of Hollywood and the Indies in Portland is embodied in the career of Gus Van Sant who slips and slides with ease between these two worlds.

A timeline:

American Lifeograph founded 1910

Lewis Moomaw makes The Chechacos 1924

Lew Cook makes The Little Baker c1925

PGE makes It Can Be Done c1936

Tektronix founded 1946

Frank Hood founds Teknifilm Lab, early 1950’s

Andries Deinum arrives 1957

Homer Groening starts his own ad agency 1958

Center For The Moving Image founded 1965

Bob Summers and Brooke Jacobson found Northwest Film Center 197o

Tim Smith and Matt Groening make Drugs: Killers or Dillers 1972

Brooke Jacobson founds Northwest Media Project 1974

Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner make Closed Mondays 1974

Don Zavin makes Fast Break 1977

Penny Allen makes Property 1979

Rose Bond makes Gaia’s Dream 1982

Gus Van Sant makes Mala Noche 1985

Bill Plympton makes Your Face 1987

Matt Groening makes The Simpsons 1987

Jim Blashfield makes Leave Me Alone 1988

Joan Gratz makes Mona Lisa Descending A Staircase 1992

Gus Van Sant makes Good Will Hunting 1997.

Miranda July makes The Amateurist 1998

Chris Eyre makes Smoke Signals 1998

Will Vinton makes The PJ’s 1999

Travis Knight makes Coraline 2009

Jon Raymond writes & Neil Kopp produces Meek’s Cutoff 2010, one of five Oregon films at Sundance in 2011.

This post is dedicated to Portland filmmaker/film writer David Walker, who inspired it by raising the question “how rare is regional filmmaking, anyway?”

“Now in this part of Florida, all the fish are federally protected, except from each other.”

Homer Groening’s travelogue combines found footage ala Craig Baldwin with cosmically disoriented voiceover  ala Miranda July.

To place this in Oregon film history…..

Ten years after this, Penny Allen would take Property to Sundance. The ever resourceful Allen had paid her crew, which included Gus Van Sant, with CETA funds.

Ten years after that, in 1989, Gus Van Sant would make Drugstore Cowboy.

1989 was also, of course, the year that Matt Groening would begin his conquest of prime time television, with The Simpsons moving out from under Tracey Ullman’s wing and debuting on their own.

But in 1969, all this was in the future.

I hereby claim Basic Brown Basic Blue as an Oregon film, on the basis of Homer Groening’s contributions as producer,  writer, director, editor, and narrator.

“The entire soundtrack is water, nothing but water”

Homer Groening, father of us all, was an ad man by day and an experimental filmmaker by night.

I hereby claim A Study In Wet as an Oregon film, on the basis of Homer Groening’s contribution as director.

Film preservationist Michele Kribs receives a commendation from Thomas Vaughn, former head of the Oregon Historical Society.

Michele Kribs has kept an eye on the Oregon Historical Society’s moving image archive since 1979.  Although the collection is catalogued, she remains the best source of information about what the archive holds and how to find it.

Michele explained to me that Oregon had an early start in the film industry because of three things: the Rose Festival, the Columbia Gorge, and the Pendleton Round Up. These three endlessly fascinating subjects were documented, year after year, for national audiences by silent newsreel photographers. The steadiness of the demand for these three Oregon subjects created enough economic stability for a local film scene.

The coming of sound in 1927 dampened the progress of the local industry. Only Hollywood had the budgets to keep up with the expanded costs brought in by sound. But since the roots of Portland’s film industry were deep, there was never a complete hiatus. Local ad agencies, including one run by Homer Groening, kept skills ( and processing labs)  alive. Then in 1975, after Will Vinton came home with an Oscar,  independent filmmakers in Portland had renewed determination and inspiration.

Michele was not the first preservationist/archivist to work for OHS. That honor goes to the man who trained her: Lewis Clark Cook, a filmmaker-turned-archivist who inspired both Will Vinton and Jim Blashfield ( who in turn inspired, employed and mentored a young, film curious, Gus Van Sant.) For that reason, Lew Cook could reasonably be called the granddaddy of Portland filmmaking today.

Congratulations, Michele Kribs, and thank you for keeping everything in order, including our sense of Portland film history.

One name kept coming up. Ellen Thomas said “Homer Groening”. Will Vinton said “Homer Groening”.Bill Plympton said “Homer Groening”. What was the question?  Dennis and I were asking them who we should know about in Portland film history.

From the Seattle Times obituary for Groening, in 1996.

Homer P. Groening was born Dec. 30, 1919, a U.S. citizen in Main Centre, Saskatchewan, the son of Mennonite farmers. He spent his youth in Oregon.

He earned the rank of Eagle Scout and was a co-founder in 1936 of Camp Pioneer at the base of Mount Jefferson. He graduated from Linfield College in McMinnville, Ore., in 1941.

He met his wife, Margaret, at Linfield. They married in 1942.

Mr. Groening flew a B-17 over Europe during World War II and participated in the D-Day invasion, winning a Distinguished Flying Cross.

After the war, he returned to Portland and joined the Botsford, Constantine and Gardner ad agency as a production assistant.

He was called up again to fly transport planes in Korea.

Upon his return, he became a vice president at the ad agency, working on accounts such as Jantzen, Pendleton, Olympia beer, Idaho potatoes and Western Hotels. He started his own agency in 1958.

“He was an absolute creative genius,” said former Advertising Federation President Mick Scott, who worked with Mr. Groening to found the American Advertising Museum in Portland.

When film caught his interest, he taught himself the craft.

“He was a one-man show,” said his daughter, Lisa. “He did the producing, writing, shooting, sound recording, editing, directing and narrating.”

Among his film clients were Jantzen, Timberline Lodge, Johnson Motors, Eastman Kodak and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

He won numerous Golden Eagles, given by the Council on International Non-Theatrical Events (CINE), and awards from the Advertising Association of the West and the American Film Festival.

He produced a string of films about water in all its forms, including “Get Wet,” “Getting Wetter,” “Psychedelic Wet” and “Study in Wet.”

Mr. Groening’s son, Matt, said he received creative encouragement at home, in part because his father was a cartoonist himself. Mr. Groening took colored pencils and sketch pads home to his five children. He would make up the beginning of a story and his children would finish it.

When young Will Vinton stood in Portland with his brand new Oscar in 1975, wondering if he should stick around, he took a page from Homer Groening, and decided to stay.

One consequence of that decision…..

Travis Knight and Mark Gustafson next month will be in LA nervously waiting for the moment they open the envelope for Best Animated Feature. Both artists are former Will Vinton Studio employees, mentored by Will, who was in turn mentored by Homer.

In 1959, Oregon asked Portland filmmaker and adman Homer Groening to orchestrate the statewide celebration of the centennial of statehood. One teenager who remembers being hired by Groening to hand out brochures for the celebration grew up to be the poet Barbara Drake. In the picture above, she is the first on the right.

In the picture below, she’s the one smack dab in the middle.

Barbara Drake’s most recent book of poetry, Driving One Hundred, was published in 2009 by Windfall Press. Other books of poetry include What We Say to Strangers, Love at the Egyptian Theatre, Life in a Gothic Novel, Bees in Wet Weather, and Small Favors. She is also the author of Writing Poetry, widely used as a college textbook, and Peace at Heart: an Oregon Country Life, a memoir, which was an Oregon Book Award finalist in 1999. Born in Kansas, she moved with her parents to Oregon as a small child and grew up in Coos Bay. She earned her B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from the University of Oregon, and subsequently lived in Michigan for sixteen years where she taught at Michigan State University before returning to Oregon to teach at Linfield College, from 1983 until her recent retirement. The author and her husband live on a small farm in the foothills of the Oregon Coast Range.

From the bio of Drake on the Mountain Writers website.

Maybe Oregon artists are especially good at passing their gifts down to their children. Homer Groening’s son Matt followed him into show business, while Barbara Drake’s daughter Monica followed her into literature.

Barbara has another connection to Oregon film. She told me  she loved animated films so much that once she took a class at Northwest Film Center so she could make one of her own. She shot her drawings in sequence, just as instructed,  and took the film to be developed. Unfortunately she forgot to tell the lab to print each frame 12 times. When she got the film back the images flew past so fast no human eye could decipher them.

I suppose Barbara’s film is still there, waiting to be seen by super gifted people in the future who can see  images that pass really, really fast. That was her only attempt at filmmaking, and she was philosophical about it. Maybe she turned it into a poem.

First version of America’s most beloved nuclear family, The Simpsons, as unveiled on The Traci Ullman Show.

The Simpsons eventually became movie stars, but for two decades they labored away on the small screen. You may have heard of them.

Matt Groening, their Portland born and raised creator, is second generation show biz — Homer Groening, his father, was an independent filmmaker and advertising man in Portland. Abraham Groening, his grandfather, was a professor at Lewis and Clark College.

I hereby claim everything ever made starring Bart, Maggie, Lisa, Homer and Marge Simpson as an Oregon film, based on the Oregon origin of their creator, Lincoln High School alumnus Matt Groening.

This post brought to you by the Oregon Cartoon Institute, your source for Oregon animation and cartooning history since 2003.

Homer Groening’s success as an independent commercial filmmaker made it possible for him to moonlight as an independent experimental filmmaker.  This 1973 promotional film for Linfield College, his own alma mater,  is one of his commercial jobs.

Here’s part one of A Student’s View of Linfield College. The other two sections of the film are also on Youtube.

Perhaps Homer felt unusually at home on a college campus because his own father, Abram Groening (Matt Groening’s grandfather), taught at Lewis & Clark College in Portland.

I hereby claim A Students’s View Of Linfield College as an Oregon film, based on Homer Groening’s contribution as writer, director, producer, sound recordist, editor and narrator.